Epiphany 4 A
Text: 1 Corinthians 1:18-31
sermon by Rev. Robert Klonowski
Faith Lutheran Church, Homewood, IL
February 2, 2020
The Key
These winter Sundays of the Epiphany season we are reading sequentially from St. Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians. Last week’s lesson and my sermon addressed the issue of divisions in the Corinthian church, and divisions among us Christians today. Church is not about this position over against another, we heard; belonging to this little group over that one. In church you become something much bigger than you thought you were. The divisions among us are robbed of any power, when we begin to understand the group to which we really belong, the church, and when we being to understand the One to Whom we really belong, Christ. Those little circles of belonging that we thought so important turn out to be much too small for what God plans for us, and the circle that is drawn all around us by Christ turns out to be unimaginably large, welcoming, and generous.
Now in this morning’s lesson St. Paul extends and explains the argument. What is it exactly that is going to get us from here to there, from the divisions and brokenness and disappointments with one another that we know in this world, to the forgivenesses and the reconciliations and the healing that can speak to us of another world, of a Kingdom of God that in Christ has now drawn near? Well, let me tell you how that works, says St. Paul. Let me tell you how that works!
The key to the way it works is … the cross. That is the key, says St. Paul, to that world we so long for, the key to the very Kingdom of God.
Now you already know something about keys. Before you get to the cross, and the key to the Kingdom of God, you know something about the keys to this world, about the things that will get you in, get you ahead, offer you access to the ways and the power of this world. These are the keys that were carried on the chains of poor Marley’s ghost in the Charles Dickens story A Christmas Carol, remember? He was weighed down with the keys to his lockboxes, the keys to his money, the keys to all the places of worldly security and worldly power in which he had placed his trust.
What are the keys to this world that you carry, like Marley? If you are smart and well-educated, well, that’s just key, isn’t it? That’ll open a lot of doors. If you have money, certainly, that’s key in this world. If you are good-looking and socially adept, that is key, of course, when you are young, and not so bad later in life, either. And then, one of my own favorites: if you are right, oh, that is key! If you are right: if you have what St. Paul calls here “the discernment of the discerning.” Think of a significant point of tension you’ve known recently, maybe with your spouse, or a work colleague, or a friend. Were you right? Wasn’t that just so important, to be right? Isn’t that just key?
If you’re going to live your life according to what Paul calls here the wisdom of this world, you’re going to need one of those big old janitor key-rings, because you’re going to need a lot of those keys, and the more the better.
Or you can travel light. If you want to leave that heavy, wheezing old wisdom of this world behind, and live instead as if the bright and joy-filled world that is the Kingdom of God has come near, well then, there’s only one key, and that is the cross. I know the cross seems foolish and weak – what kind of religion is it would claim that its God gets humiliated and then gets put to death? – but God’s foolishness, St. Paul writes here, is wiser than human wisdom, and God’s weakness [ — the cross — ] is stronger than human strength.
Let me tell you how that works. You can think of some significant point of tension between you and, you name it – spouse, former friend, work colleague; between you and God, for that matter. And you can work that point of tension according to the wisdom of this world. You could prove to me that you’re right (and you probably are!). You can work every powerful angle you can think of to gain advantage, to defend yourself, to demonize the other, and maybe to cut yourselves off from one another. That’s a lot, when I lay it out like that, isn’t it? And that’s the way, all too often, of social media engagement, isn’t it?, that business about defend your own position and demonizing the other and cutting off – cancelling, right? That’s a heavy load to carry. Lots of keys needed, for all that baggage.
Or, you could work it the way of the cross. That would mean not cutting yourself off, but hanging in, the way Jesus did with us. That would mean not demonizing the other, but instead holding yourself to the discipline of seeing the other as a person of value, dignity, and worth, even as Jesus sees that person. That would mean not being defensive about yourself, but even making yourself vulnerable to the other, even as Jesus did at the cross. One key, the cross, and only that, but oh, my, what a big and inviting and generous way of life it opens for us, doesn’t it? Don’t you want to just leave all that heavy, death-dealing stuff of this world behind, and instead walk into the Kingdom of God that has come near, free of all that burden and lifted up and carried by pure grace? I invite you to travel light, Christians; carry only that one key, and let’s spend the rest of our lives exploring that new heaven and new earth that God has now opened up to us.